Punishment
by ThyHeavenlyYard
Summary: AU where there are no Fighter/Sacrifice bonds to determine certain kinds of love


You look at her, and you think that she's cute, (_god)_ so cute. You look at her childish, undeveloped body, her small twin pigtails sprouting from the side of her heads, her tiny, pointed kitten ears and her tiny hands and wide caramel eyes and full, pouting lips, and she's just too adorable, too sweet and too ethereal to be real. You let her kiss you on the side of your face, and as she brushes the soft skin of her cheeks against the hollowed plane of your cheekbones, there's a murmur of her scent brushing against your face like some whisper of some sailcloth in the summer breeze and where her lips met your skin there's a faint stickiness, like strawberry jam, that you don't want to rub off. You hold her waist and squeeze a little and in response she'll let out some affectionate giggle and try to squirm out of your grip, and soon you end up in a wrestling match involving kisses and faint biting as playful tactics to free yourself from her grasp as well as kicking and tickling and licking but you make sure you're careful, so careful, not to break her delicate figure because who knows what would happen if you forgot to control yourself, if you allowed one careless movement with your arm and suddenly you were left with a broken girl with a snapped neck, her body lifeless and cold and devoid of that dancing warmth you so love basking in.

You trace with your calloused palms the white plains of her body as she begins to grow, her swelling breasts and widening hips and you carefully plant a kiss on her navel, cautious and making sure that it doesn't go anywhere beyond those subtle touches, all the while mapping the contours and outlines of that youth, that sweet and still blossoming childishness, that small compactness, knowing that in a few years it will be all different, less soft and more unyielding and more foreign to your touch, your analytical surveying and mapping of the cartography of those unknown regions of her body. She watches you, not quite sure if it's moral but nevertheless enjoying the sight of your pitiful, begging face, that lurking lust that she recognizes, and despite trust or whatever she sees when she's with you, you still stumble home later and have to touch yourself frantically in the bedroom, the bathroom, the shower, and you can't get rid of her faintly blushing face (_fuck_ _fuck_ _fuck_ _fuck_) and you're done and your eyes are closed and you can feel the softness of her hair and a trace of that cherry blossom shampoo that she uses, and she is there, in your dreams, wrapping ghostly arms around your head and giving you soft kisses that taste like peaches and whispering forgiveness for your sins, and (_ahyesfuck_) she is the Holy Ghost, the redemption and _no_ you do not care enough about yourself to stop seeing her and you're still alone in your bed, aching for her warmth.

She wants you to help her with the new body she's still growing into. She doesn't want her Father to be the one to look at her when Mother is too busy. She knows what _that_ word means now, and she doesn't like it. So you take her hand and you lead her into one of those stores she's never seen before, and with much care and inquiring you help her pick out new training bras and panties and undergarments, small and cute and frilly or with ribbons or small fake pearls and after you're all done she thanks you, and you see her eyes water a little bit, the cushiony fluff of her tail drop with some despair you'll never ever (_why tell me why baby_) ever understand. But you ignore it, despite a small ache in your chest, and she smiles again while burying something deep underneath the nourishing soil, some golden secret and then sudden the clouds release a downpour of rain onto the storm battered earth, and there is the thought again that contrary to all expectations, her little body will be flung out into the gale again if only you could push her out the window.

She's running, running, flying across the earth. You are watching lazily, contentedly, in the summer breeze, watching her long smooth legs and her shorts and her shape clinging T-shirt when she trips and stumbles on her shoelaces and falls to the ground and you see her gash her knee open, and she tries to hold in her pain but suddenly she screams out loud, and you rush to her side, and when you get there to see her wound, dripping down that porcelain perfection is her blood and her knee is now chafed, raw, bloody flesh torn in pieces, hanging in small strips and attached by tender sinews of skin. You want to kiss it away, her pain, want to let your lips slip across her skin and clasp over her own mouth and shut up her wail and take her, right there, right then. But that impulse fades away as she whimpers and buries her face into your chest and struggles not to cry and your hands are on her back, her shoulders, her hips, and from your lips you draw a few murmuring croons, a broken lullaby for the ages, a reason for her not to let loose another sob. And then she turns up her pain swollen face to you, and you whisper her name again and again and again and she wipes away the wetness in her eyes with the back of her hand, swallows, swallows a scream and gently plucks off that large piece of now useless skin with a courage you haven't encountered before. More of that red runs down her legs, staining her shoes, her socks, and even the ground, but she waves it aside and her throat is bare, and you lean over to kiss it.

Her first day of middle school and you wave goodbye to her and she trots determinedly inside the iron gates that soon lock you out. Instead of the small, formal tie that everyone usually wears, you've persuaded her to wear a bright red ribbon on her chest and white ribbons in her hair, just so that you can pick her out from the crowd despite her tiny height and slight, wraithlike figure. And you sigh and run a hand through those golden brown bangs she loves to tug on and you wonder if people will bully her, but you wave that thought aside because she is someone who most definitely fight back if someone ever tried to insult her, possibly even murder them, and _ah_ there it is, the break in clouds, and sunshine fills up the earth, melts away the cold and you are bathed in the thought that she had whispered to you a faint confession of love and left you her handkerchief, and you pull it out again and _oh_ it smells almost like music, like a faint _gloria in fucking excelsis Deo, _a long-drawn _hallelujah_.

"What if it was fate, Tokino?"

"Hm?"

"Fate. It's a little odd that this is actually working out, you know." She rests her head on your stomach, and rubs her face on the fabric of your shirt as if she was some kitten. "You and me. You're really adorable; I'm so glad it was me-!" Her tail twitches in pleasure, and she wriggles into a more comfortable laying position that ends with her half sprawled on your stomach and chest. She's light and not much of a burden and yet her weight makes it ever so uncomfortable to breathe.

"Relationships only don't work out if they're more than ten years apart, Mikado."

"Is that so?" She looks up at you, and one hand creeps to the belt, but you shake your head. Not yet, not yet, you're so afraid you might accidently hurt her, violate that sacrosanct purity. Only fourteen, only fourteen, you say.

Too young.

You breathe in her scent every day and it's a little different each time. There's a trace of cloves at one point then the whisper of newly crushed mint leaves, mixed in with the sugar sweet of honey and gentled off by strawberries, peaches, a whole variety of scents and it's as if you could just pluck a tiny portion of that tender flesh and place it in your mouth and it would blossom there, melt and bloom into some exotic flower. You love brushing her long hair for her after baths together with a wide toothed comb, careful not to yank too harshly lest she cry out uncomfortably, and she contentedly sits there, completely bare and with slender legs crossed but not from embarrassment as much as from the cold. You sniff the top of her head and her kitten ears flick at your antics, and you laugh and she tilts her head back and (_almost she's almost here almost_) she's smiling and you lift that dripping cascade (_nice nice_) and pull it over her shoulder, covering that flat chest and navel and that hint of what could happen but won't, won't, won't.

She nibbles on a piece of fruit as she skips on the stones besides the koi pond, and you watch her, making sure she doesn't fall. She tells you about a friend she often spends her time with when she isn't with you, how he tells her funny stories and teaches her how to hurt and manipulate people when no one is watching. You still don't know much about this friend, how healthy his presence is for Mikado, but she seems to like him quite a bit, so you let it go. You watch her, and she drops the snack, sending ripples across the still pond, and it looks like dancing glass as it takes in the view above and distorts the playback in its waves. Her face is crestfallen, but she masks it quickly with a careless shrug, already beginning to throw off disappointments as if she doesn't care. You wonder if it's alright to dream of her now, dream dreams, dream of caressing her thighs and cupping her chest and biting her ears, but no, no, just a few more years, just a few more years, and then it should be fine. When she's mature enough, you'll take her in your arms and draw her face close to your own, and kiss her until she's out of breath and she grows submissive to your touch. Until then, you think. A couple of years.

It's her first high school party, and you help her pick out a dress. She spins for you, turns on one foot and let the fabric flutter like petals before coming back to a rest on her slender figure. She looks over her shoulder and asks you for your opinion, and you clap slowly, and she breaks into a shy smile, before asking if you could be her date for that night. Her school does allow guests, as long as they fill out paperwork, she says. You agree, say _of course I would love too, Mikado, _and she covers her face just a little as her face turns just a hint redder and _god_ is she lovely when she's excited for something, despite her usually cool demeanor.

She's gone.

_Wherewherewherewhere?_

You rush through the crowd, dread in your chest. Your heart beats faster and faster- Mikado isn't here, where is she, _oh god Mikado where are you_- she said she would be out for a couple minutes for a breather from all the dancing- you fell asleep on a chair like the narcoleptic fool you are, and the clock tells you it's been forty minutes and surely she had to be within the dance floor, somewhere and you keep inside a silent scream because something something something tells you that she's hurt or in pain and it's your fault your fault _God just this once please-!_

Your cell rings. It's her. You run outside the hotel and pick up the call. Suddenly the night air is filled with quiet whimpering, strained animal noises, and no no no you stop and stare at the glass screen in shock. You hear some other guttural voice panting and grunting on the other end and it's her voice pleading, begging, crying out in pain and it's broken apart in rhythmic gasps and thuds and you shout out instinctively in terror and panic and you scream into the phone, scream threats for him to get away from her but he hears it and he laughs and her throat grows a little hoarser, the sounds of dirt being displaced in a rocking fashion merely grows faster and faster and then suddenly there is high pitched wail and it stops, it all stops, and you freeze, unsure, not knowing what to do but you're ready to cry or kill someone if it means she'll be saved and someone picks up her phone and tells you that your girlfriend was good for a little kid, and that you need to be a little more careful watching over her open cup.

Your knees feel weak, you're dizzy, but you remain still. You call her name, whisper it, and she finally answers your call with a sob, and then between hiccups tells you where she is. You break into a run, despite the fact you haven't run in years now, and after what feels like days and weeks and years of running although your phone tells you seven minutes, you finally find the grassy underpass where she's prostrate on the floor, her kitten ears and kitten tail kicked a distance away, her hair all cut and scattered about in snowy, featherlike pieces on the ground, clothes torn into pieces, leaving open her bare legs and midriff. She turns her blank, blank wide eyes up at you, and reflected in them is a murderous rage and all you can do is choke out apologizes, and gather her into your arms as if you were scooping up a tiny kitten even though she no longer can be called a child, and she begins to cry. You've never seen her in such terrible, broken and lonely and pained tears and she chokes out her story, how her friend had led her away with a text and how she hadn't been feeling too well and how _his _colleague or friend or whatever had beaten her and cut her hair and touched her in various places to make her react in certain ways, made her bleed, how Seimei Aoyagi had held up his camera phone and filmed the rape and how she (_ohgod she's crying blushing embarrassed I'll kill those bastards_) thinks she may have even orgasmed at the very end of it all.

And so it seems, in the end, the one to break her wasn't you.


End file.
